


difference is distance

by angelica_barnes



Series: ABC [22]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Love, M/M, Relationship Study, Unhealthy Relationships, i'm sorry i love both of them so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 21:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20021044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: love can't cure everything.love certainly can't cure this.(or, a look into the men that steve rogers and tony stark are, and the monster they are together.)22. voice





	1. Tony

**Author's Note:**

> lyrics from "Surprise" by Maria Mena which is basically the stony friendship/relationship in a nutshell
> 
> hope you enjoy!

**I was the sun, he was the moon.**

**I was war, he was peace.**

**I was disaster, he was beauty.**

**I was sorrow, he was happiness.**

**he was my savior. I was his destruction.**

**\- somebody**

  
  


Tony and Steve have never quite been friends.

They’ve gotten close before, sure, but friends, no. Working together is as far as it went, because Tony didn’t believe in love and Steve would do anything in its name.

Including save the man who murdered Tony’s parents, and that’s inexcusable in the eyes of someone who has never known what a victim looks like.

Yet the mirror stands to be his only friend.

**I would react badly to the slightest hint of hesitance**

Steve is like Tony in the standout that his bad memories are far worse than most. Panic robs their sleep, anxiety attacks their rare peace, stress steals their hunger and thirst. Even beyond that: guilt nearly takes their lives.

Surrounding these men, their friends, their families, is an immeasurable, incurable sadness.

And every one of them can feel it. How Steve’s almost emcompasses them all with its weight and depth.

  
**he’d bend awkwardly to suit my mood** **  
** **no word from his defense**

Steve is a fighting man. He defends those he believes deserve defending; he has never been one of those he considers worthy. Therefore, he never stands up so much for himself, settling for scorn and teasing remarks that sting far more than they should, because he believes he can take it and believes he should.

Tony has abused that power more than anyone else, but remains in ignorant bliss until Bucky Barnes shows up and reignites the fires in Steve’s heart. The fires that burn day and night for the one person he has ever thought it worth defending himself for.

Living for.

**_  
_ ** **I’d cry knowing how my tears felt like acid**

**burning through his skin**

Steve wears his heart on his sleeve. Everyone knows it, can see it, can tell, and hence they know immediately that though there is distance between Bucky and Steve’s bodies, there has never been and never will be distance between their hearts, minds, and souls. They are each other’s destined, regardless of how rare and imperfect their love may be.

Tony can never understand that, no matter how hard Steve tries to make him. Tries to explain. Tries to convince.

Later, as the war begins. As they each start their steady downfalls.

Tries to forgive.

  
**pushed every little button but the right one**

**that would let me in**

Tony’s always asked too many questions. But never the right ones, never in the right way, never at the right time or with the right intentions. Steve is nearly silent, never letting slip a single note about his personal life other than what you can read in a textbook or museum.

Not until Barnes shows up, and suddenly Steve’s emotions and past explode from his mouth, in screams and whispers and cries.

  
**now he’s afraid of me, now he’s afraid of me**

Tony is not used to being the villain.

At the very least, he is not used to caring so much about it.

  
**it took me by surprise** **  
** **the hatred in his eyes**

But when he lays a hand on Barnes, suddenly he has murdered a thousand men, no worse than Steve Rogers, whose eyes now burn with hate and the unwillingness to forgive.

  
**I’ve pushed this man as far as he could go** **  
** **but he lacked the words to let me know**

Tony has corrupted him, but Steve has never let on how much until just now.

**  
** **he acted out, now I can see it is my fault**

Tony lets them go, on his knees, because he knows just how wrecked inside Steve is already.

He does not want to be the man he has become.

The one who taught the embodiment of love to hate.


	2. Steve

**I made changes that went unnoticed** **  
** **sang songs for deaf ears**

Tony has never been a listening man. No one can know this as well as Steve does, who has seen firsthand how Tony’s ears work.

They don’t.

At least not how anyone would like, with their filters of critique, the ones that let nothing through but positive remarks. Things about all the wonderfulness Tony Stark can and will and has done, because he cannot bear to hear anything else without crumbling to pieces.

Steve is no stranger to breaking.

  
**he mistook my silence for punishment** **  
** **as it had been all these years**

But Steve cannot speak. He cannot voice his desires, his wishes, so strongly. He can only defend others, not himself, his shared opinions rather than his singular ones, such as Bucky Barnes being a good man even after.

A deaf man and a mute one. What a torn, unstitchupable pair.

**  
** **I’d cry knowing how my tears felt like acid**

**burning through his skin**

Tony is more fragile than he would ever let anyone know. But Steve knows fragility, the way someone’s touch can burn and the way their tone can scrape.

Steve knows the feeling that comes with first priorities, the little voice that hisses harsh words against putting anyone else before them.

The difference is, Steve’s is Bucky.

Tony’s is himself.

  
**now he’s afraid of me, now he’s afraid of me**

Tony can never know love the way Steve does, can never sacrifice everything for it, because he has not felt his heart breaking. Tearing, ripping, shredding itself apart with the loss of the one it beats for.

He has not felt it slowly stitch itself back together as that one’s eyes meet yours after so many years.

He has not felt the desperation that comes with not being able to  _ breathe _ .

  
**it took me by surprise** **  
** **the hatred in his eyes**

Steve has never had someone hate him with the same sort of burning passion that Tony does. It bothers him, gets under his skin more than nearly anything before.

No one wants to be a hated man, no one less than Steve Rogers.

  
**I’ve pushed this man as far as he could go** **  
** **but he lacked the words to let me know**

But he has Bucky’s hand in his, their bodies once again belonging to each other as their hearts always have, and Steve knows what worthy sacrifice is.

It’s this.

**  
** **he acted out**

He wonders if Tony will ever  _ know _ .

**now I can see it is my fault.**

  
  


**some of us have to make mistakes.**

**some of us have to get our hands a little bloody sometimes.**

**some of us are human!**

**\- Stiles Stilinski (Teen Wolf)**

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed! thx for reading


End file.
